Dragoncrest Cliffs Buffany of House Bufflepuff

The dice have spoken! Open in case someone wants to see him or yell at him or whatever. Will archive as read only in 5 days if no one joins!

Having his sleep disturbed and cut short by nightmares was finally becoming too much for Ephraim. He moved through his days in a dull haze, never knowing exactly what time it was or what he should be doing with himself. He all but abandoned his duties to the kru in favour of aimlessly circling the borders over and over and over again, never accomplishing anything. It was getting so bad that he was beginning to hallucinate regularly on these endless circuits. Normally it was just noises: a phantom snarl making his heart jump, or the sound of a howl that reminded him of Antumbra, or the clashing of teeth in a serene, silent forest.

Today they weren't just noises. Beside him walked a small brown-furred wolf. Her eyes weren't the bright green of her real body, for Ephraim had never known her with anything but the blue of puphood. She was just as he remembered, small and fierce and full of pride for her clan. He had his ears turned firmly back and refused to look at her for what she'd done to her brother, but she kept pace with him easily, wearing that haughty expression, the exact one from when she told him he was saying the words wrong.

"Natrona," she said, and Ephraim scowled. No, you, he yearned to tell her, but some remaining logic told him that none of this was real. He picked up his pace, willing his paws to remain on the borders even though he felt yanked away by some invisible force. Heda was gone. His family was his enemy. Heda was gone. His family. He could never reunite with them or tell them how much he missed them because he owed a debt to the wolves who had saved him, and they were the enemy. But Heda was gone.

"Natrona," said another voice, this one more of a drawl. Because he had only seen her once, his memory couldn't reconstruct Rosalyn exactly as she was, but she wasn't so different from Kiwi. The youth was merely larger now, her eyes red, her face scarred and her teeth bloody with Antumbra's blood. That hadn't happened, had it? Shaking his head, Ephraim tried to jog away, but the smirking pirate followed.

But now she was a pale fiend with a darkened face and no distinct features, because he couldn't remember, snapping at his heels and cackling wildly. "Natrona!" she hissed, and the boy flattened his ears and yelled shut up! at no one before his remaining resolve left him and he turned and fled from the borders, fled from Drageda and his family lurking below and the hallucinations and all the things making it impossible for him to breathe. Heda was gone. Etoille was gone. He'd fought his kin for them, however unwitting he had been at the time, and now he could never know his own family, and he could no longer feel at home here knowing he was just an outsider to them.

He owed no debt anymore.